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Moscow praises Azerbaijan’s stance against global sports politicization — Kremlin

"We highly appreciate the Azerbaijani leadership’s stance, we keep siding with it," Dmitry Peskov said

MOSCOW, July 10. /TASS/. Moscow repeatedly pointed out to the inadmissibility of global attempts aimed at politicizing sports and highly appreciates a position assumed by the Azerbaijani leadership in this regard, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

The global Non-Aligned Movement proposed earlier in the year to decide in favor of adopting Azerbaijani President Ilkham Aliyev’s declaration, which stipulated a neutral-status for all Russian and Paralympic teams' athletes at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games.

"We highly appreciate the Azerbaijani leadership’s stance and we keep siding with it," Peskov said. "We have stated more than once about the inadmissibility of politicizing sports."

Last week, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voiced its full support for a declaration by the global Non-Aligned Movement calling for maintaining political neutrality ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics in France.

IOC President Thomas Bach thanked the global Non-Aligned Movement for this decision stating that "The IOC warmly welcomes the support by the 120 member states of the Non-Aligned Movement."

Paris will host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games between July 26 and August 11, 2024. At the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Japan, Russian archers won two silver medals.

On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.

Following the IOC’s recommendations in late February 2022, the majority of global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.

At its session on January 25, 2023, the IOC Executive Board put forward a proposal to permit individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to take part in international sports tournaments, but only under certain conditions. Specifically, athletes from the two countries should not be "actively supporting" Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and must compete under a neutral status.